The new mughal

TNN|

Oct 30, 2007, 12.38 AM IST

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A legacy of political brashness isn’t the only thing UP CM Mayawati wants to bequeath. The grandoise plans, it seems, extend to her architectural vision. The lady is known to be fond of grand structures and buildings, and her preference for red sandstone is also obvious. Many memorials she’d built during her previous tenures as CM, as well as the new ones ordered this time around liberally use red standstone.

Patently, there are vestiges of an imperial style of functioning here. Thus, when she threw open her new bungalow at Nehru Road in the cantonment area of the state capital, visitors expectedly got to gape at an imposing vision in the Mughal’s favourite stone, set amidst the other colonial bungalows in the area. All hail the Queen!

Venue of fortunes

The venue of the annual conference of the Karnataka Planters’ Association (KPA)—the state grows over 70% of India’s coffee— has been a barometer of the fortune, or lack of it, of the forum’s grower-members. In a year when coffee prices were very good, and planters got a whopping profit on the realisations made by selling their beans, the KPA hosted its annual conference at a tony five-star hotel in Bangalore. And when coffee-bean prices crashed, the KPA hosted its annual meet at the Glass House of Lal Bagh, the garden created by Tipu Sultan’s father Hyder Ali almost 250 years ago. That the KPA has been hosting its annual meet for the last few years at a luxury hotel, but not of the five-star variety, indicates that prices have somewhat stabilised!

Low end of the spectrum

The DMK seems to be running into a period of turbulence. While party president and Tamil Nadu CM M Karunanidhi is facing the Supreme Court’s heat, one of DMK’s pointspersons in Delhi, telecom minister A Raja, is finding himself on a sticky wicket. The reason: not Ram Sethu but the confusion over telecom licences and spectrum. AIADMK MPs are gearing up for a scrap as the telecom department has sought legal opinion to know if it can grant GSM spectrum on a priority basis to the Tata Group, bypassing over 500 applications in queue.

Since lobbying over spectrum and new licences is intensifying by the day, Raja’s burden is only going to get worse. AIADMK leaders are hoping that this will create a ripple effect, providing an opening for other UPA rivals to launch a full attack. With the BJP already going hammer and tongs at DMK over the Sethusamudram project, it seems Karunanidhi –– seen to be opposing the N-deal with the US due to fears that elections now will give AIADMK the upper hand –– will need to put up his best defences in the months to come!

The cookie-jar trap

A reversal of roles can sometimes leave policymakers squirming in embarrassment. At a recent meeting of a group of ministers reviewing the new pharmaceutical policy, there was a discussion on how some former Supreme Court judges had provided legal opinion to the pharma industry favouring deregulation in the sector.

This was diametrically opposite to the order they had passed while serving in the apex court (and obviously, the industry used the opinion to impress the government.) According to sources who attended the ministerial meeting, one of the members of the group — a lawyer turned-cabinet minister — suddenly said he was thoroughly familiar with the case. When queried, the minister replied that he had represented a leading pharmaceutical organisation earlier in the court against the government’s pricing policies. It was the chairman of the panel who voiced the question all other members of the ministerial group were itching to ask: “On which side are you now?”